In the Presence of the Enemy

by Elizabeth George

  He blew out a lungful of air, saying, “I think we got ourselves some serious trouble.”

  “My thought exactly,” Lynley responded and reached for the phone.

  29

  AT THE SIGHT OF BARBARA and his mother on the floor, Robin went as white as mash at high tea. He cried out, “Mum!” and dropped to his knees. He reached for Corrine’s hand tentatively, as if she might dissolve at too rough a touch.

  Barbara said, “She’s okay. She had a spell, but she’s okay now. I tore the place up looking for her inhaler though. I’ve left a mess upstairs.”

  He didn’t seem to hear her. He said, “Mum? What happened? Mum? Are you all right?”

  Corrine made a feeble movement towards her son. She said, “Sweet chappie. Robbie,” in a weak murmur, although her breathing had vastly improved. “Had a spell, darling. But Barbara…saw to me. Quite all right in a moment. Don’t worry.”

  Robin insisted that she go to bed at once. “I’ll phone Sam for you, Mum. Is that what you’d like? Shall I ask Sam to come round?”

  Her eyelids fluttered as she shook her head wearily. “Just want my little boy,” she murmured. “My Robbie. Just like old times. All right with you, darling?”

  “Of course it’s all right.” Robin sounded indignant. “Why wouldn’t it be all right? You’re my mum, aren’t you? What’re you thinking?”

  Barbara had a good idea what Corrine was thinking, but she said nothing. She was more than happy to hand the other woman over to Robin’s care. She helped him get his mother to her feet and then assisted the two of them up the stairs. He went into the bedroom with her and shut the door. From behind it, Barbara could hear their voices, Corrine’s fragile and Robin’s soothing, like a father speaking reassuringly to a child. He was saying, “Mum, you’ve got to take more care. How can I give you over to Sam if you won’t start taking more care?”

  In the corridor, Barbara knelt among the wreckage she’d made of the linen cupboard. She began sorting through the sheets and the towels. She’d got as far as the board games, the candles, and the vast miscellanea that she’d earlier flung to the floor, when Robin came out of his mother’s bedroom. He pulled the door shut gently behind him.

  He said hastily, “Hang on there, Barbara,” when he saw what she was doing. “I’ll see to that myself.”

  “I’m the one who created the havoc.”

  “You’re the one who saved my mother’s life.” He came to her and extended his hand. “Up,” he said. “And that’s an order.” He softened his words with a smile, adding, “If you don’t mind being ordered round by a lowly DC.”

  “You’re hardly lowly.”

  “I’m glad of that.”

  She took his hand and allowed herself to be raised to her feet. She hadn’t made much progress with the mess. She said with a dip of her head towards the floor, “I did pretty much the same with her bedroom. But I expect you saw that.”

  “I’ll put it right. I’ll do the same here. Have you had your dinner?”

  “I was going to heat up something from the grocery.”

  “That won’t do.”

  “No. It’s fine. Really. A Crispbake.”

  “Barbara…” He made her name sound like a prefatory remark. His tone was low and all of a sudden underscored with a feeling she couldn’t define.

  She said quickly, “I got the Crispbake at Elvis Patel’s. Have you been in that shop? With a name like that, I had to stop in. Sometimes I think I should’ve been born in the fifties because I’ve always had a thing for blue suede shoes.”

  “Barbara…”

  She plunged on with more determination. “I was taking it to the kitchen to heat it up. That’s when your mum had her spell. I almost couldn’t find the inhaler. The way I tossed the house, it looks like—” She hesitated. His expression had become rather intense, the sort of intense that probably would have conveyed an encyclopaedia of unspoken meaning to a woman with more experience, but to Barbara it conveyed nothing other than a wary feeling that she was wading in waters deeper than she had previously thought. He said her name a third time and she felt as if a hot rash was breaking out across her chest. What in hell did those intent eyes of his mean? More, what did it mean when he said Barbara the same tender way she usually said more clotted cream? She went on in a hurry. “Anyway, your mum had her spell not ten minutes after I got home. So I never had a chance to heat the Crispbake.”

  “So you could do with a meal,” he said reasonably. “And I could do with a meal as well.” He took her arm and she could tell that the gentle pressure he placed upon it was intended to guide her towards the stairs. He said, “I’m a good cook. And I’ve brought home some lamb chops that I’ll grill for us. We’ve got fresh broccoli and some decent-looking carrots.” He paused and looked at her directly. It was some sort of challenge and she wasn’t entirely sure how to read it. “Will you let me cook for you, Barbara?”

  She wondered if cook for you was some sort of new age double entendre. If so, she couldn’t suss out its meaning. She had to admit she was hungry enough to bolt down a wild boar, so she decided that it could hardly hurt their working relationship if she let him whip up a quick dinner for her. “Okay,” she said. Still, she felt that she would be accepting the meal under completely false pretences if she didn’t make clear to Robin what had passed between her and his mother earlier. Obviously, he saw her as Corrine’s saviour and was perhaps feeling a tender gratitude for the part she’d played in the evening’s drama. And while it was true that she’d saved Corrine, what was also true was that she was the agent provocateur behind Corrine’s asthma attack as well. He needed to know that. It was only fair. So she disengaged his hand from her arm and said, “Robin, we need to talk about something.”

  At once, he looked guarded. Barbara knew that feeling. We need to talk about something generally heralded the other shoe’s dropping, and in this case it could only drop in one of two locations: on their professional relationship or their personal relationship…if they even had a personal relationship. She wanted to reassure him in some way, but she was too inexperienced in man-woman talk to do so without looking like an idiot. So she just blundered on.

  “I spoke to Celia today.”

  “Celia?” If anything, he looked even more guarded. “Celia? Why? What’s going on?”

  Brilliant, Barbara thought. He was building defences and she’d only made her initial remark. “I had to see her about the case—”

  “What’s Celia got to do with the case?”

  “Nothing as it turns out, but I—”

  “Why talk to her, then?”

  “Robin.” Barbara touched his arm. “Let me say what I have to say, okay?”

  He looked uncomfortable, but he nodded although he said insistently, “Can’t we talk below? While I make our dinner?”

  “No. I need to tell you this now. Because you might not want to cook dinner for me afterwards. You might feel the need to take some time tonight to straighten things out with Celia.” He looked perplexed, but before he had a chance to question her, she hurried on. She explained what had happened, first at the bank with Celia, then at Lark’s Haven with his mother. He listened to it all—going grim in the face at the start, saying, “Damn,” in the middle, standing silent at the end. When he didn’t make a remark within thirty seconds of her having concluded, she persisted. “So I think it’s for the best that I clear out of here after our meal. If your mum and your girlfriend have the wrong idea—”

  “She’s not my—” He cut in quickly, but he stopped himself before finishing. He said, “Look, can we talk about this downstairs?”

  “There’s nothing more to talk about. Let’s clean up this mess, and then I’ll pack my things. I’ll have dinner with you, but then I’ve got to get out of here. There’s no other choice.” She bent to the task a second time. She began to gather up a scattered Monopoly game whose money and property cards were mixed in with the markers from an ancient game of Snakes and Ladders.

&nbs
p; He reached for her arm again and stopped her. This time his grip was quite firm. He said, “Barbara. Look at me,” and his voice—like his grip—was utterly altered, as if man had suddenly taken the place of boy. She felt an odd lurch in her heartbeat. But she did as he asked. He guided her upwards again. He said, “You don’t see yourself as others see you. I’ve recognised that from the first. I expect you don’t see yourself as a woman at all, a woman who might be of interest to a man.”

  She thought, Holy shit. But what she said was, “I think I know who and what I am.”

  “I don’t believe it. If you knew who and what you are, you wouldn’t have told me what Mum thinks about us—what Celia thinks about us—in the way that you did.”

  “I just gave you the facts.” Her voice was steady. She liked to think it was even light. But she was acutely aware of his proximity and everything that his proximity implied.

  “You gave me more than the facts. You told me that you didn’t believe.”

  “Believe what?”

  “That what Celia and Mum have seen is true. That I feel something for you.”

  “And I do for you. We’ve been working together. And when you work with someone, there’s a camaraderie that develops that might—”

  “What I’ve been feeling goes beyond camaraderie. Don’t tell me you haven’t recognised that because I won’t believe you. We click together, and you know it.”

  Barbara didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t deny that there had been a small spark between them from the beginning. But it had seemed so unlikely that anything could come of it that she’d first ignored the spark and later doused it as best she could. That was the logical way to proceed, she’d told herself. They were colleagues, and colleagues shouldn’t become enmeshed. And even if they hadn’t been colleagues, she wasn’t so thick-headed that she’d for a moment forgotten the negative baggage she carried round with her: most notably her face, her figure, her manner of dress, her brusque demeanour, and her porcupine personality. Where was the man on earth who would ever see through all that rubbish to who she actually was?

  He seemed to read her mind. He said, “It’s the inside of people that’s important, not the outside. You look at yourself and you see a woman who’d never appeal to a man. Right?”

  She swallowed. He hadn’t moved away from her yet. He was expecting some sort of response, and she was going to have to make one sooner or later. Either that, or she would have to run to her room and slam the door. So say something, she told herself. Answer him. Because if you don’t…because he’s moving closer…because he might very well think…

  The words gushed out of her. “It’s been a long time. I haven’t actually been with a man in…I mean…I’m just no good at this…Don’t you want to phone Celia?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t want to phone Celia.” He closed the scant distance between them and kissed her.

  Barbara thought, Bloody hell, flaming saints, holy shit. Then she felt his tongue in her mouth and his hands on her face, then her shoulders, then her arms, then seeking her breasts. And she ceased to think. He moved against her. He backed her to the wall. He stood so that she could feel all of him, so that there would be no mistaking his intentions. Her mind said, No, best run, best hide. Her body said, Finally and bloody well time.

  The telephone rang. The noise broke them apart. They stood staring at each other, breathless, guilty, bodies hot, eyes wide. They spoke simultaneously, Barbara with, “You’d better—” Robin with, “I ought to—”

  They laughed. Robin said with a smile, “Let me get that. Stay where you are. Don’t move an inch. Promise?”

  “Yes. All right,” Barbara said.

  He went into his bedroom. She could hear his voice: the soft hullo, the pause, and then, “Yes. She’s here. Hold on.” He came out of the room with a cordless phone. He handed it to Barbara, saying, “London. Your guv.”

  Sodding hell, she thought. She ought to have phoned Lynley by now. He’d have been waiting for her report since late afternoon. She put the phone to her ear as Robin opened the linen cupboard and bent to the task of stowing its contents away once more. She could still taste the flavour of him in her mouth. She could still feel the pressure of his hands on her breasts. Lynley couldn’t have called at a less opportune moment.

  She said, “Inspector? Sorry. We’ve had a bit of a crisis here. I was just about to phone you.”

  Robin looked up at her, grinned, and went back to the work at hand.

  Lynley said quietly, “Is the constable with you?”

  “Of course he is. You just spoke to him.”

  “I mean with you now. In the same room.”

  Barbara saw Robin look up at her again. He cocked his head quizzically. She shrugged her shoulders at him and said to Lynley, “Yeah,” but she could hear her voice rise as she made the confirmation into a question. Robin went back to his work.

  Lynley said to someone else in his office, “He’s with her,” and then he went on, his voice terse and unlike him, “Listen carefully, Barbara. Keep yourself still. There’s a very good chance Robin Payne’s our man.”

  Barbara felt glued to the spot. She couldn’t have reacted had she even tried. She opened her mouth and somehow the words “Yes sir” came out, but that was the limit of what she could say.

  He said, “Is he still there? In the room? With you?”

  “Oh quite.” Barbara moved her gaze jerkily from the opposite wall to Robin, where he squatted on the floor. He was stacking up photo albums.

  Lynley said, “He wrote the kidnapping notes; he wrote Charlotte’s name and the case number on the back of the crime scene pictures. St. James has gone over them all. The writing’s a match. And we’ve confirmation from Amesford CID that Payne did the writing on the back of those pictures.”

  “I see,” Barbara said. Robin was putting the Monopoly game back into order. Money here. Houses there. Hotels next to them. She stole a glance at one of the Chance cards. Get out of gaol free. She wanted to howl.

  “We’ve traced his movements over the last few weeks,” Lynley was continuing. “He was on holiday, Barbara, which gave him the time to be in London.”

  “That is news, isn’t it?” Barbara said. Past Lynley’s words, however, she heard what she should have heard before, what she would have heard had she not been blinded by the thought—or was it the hope, you twit?—of a man’s potential interest in her. She could hear each of them speaking and the very contradiction of what they had said should have waved red flags of warning in her face:

  “I made CID just three weeks ago,” Robin’s voice, “that’s when I finished the course.”

  But Celia had said, “When he came back from the course last week…”

  And Corrine had cried, “When I phoned…he wasn’t there.” And that last was most telling of all. Barbara could hear it echoing round her skull. He wasn’t there, he wasn’t there, he wasn’t there at the detective course. Because he was in London, setting his plan in motion: trailing Charlotte, tracking Leo, getting to know each child’s movements and mapping the route he would use when it came time to snatch them.

  Lynley was saying, “Barbara. Are you there? Can you hear me?”

  She said, “Oh yes, sir. Quite. The connection’s fine at this end.” She cleared her throat because she knew she sounded odd. “I was just pondering all the whys and wherefores. You know what I mean.”

  “His motive? There’s another child out there somewhere. Beyond Charlotte and Leo, Luxford has a third child. Payne knows its identity. Or the identity of its mother. That’s what he wants Luxford to put in the paper. That’s what he’s wanted from the first.”

  Barbara watched him. He was reaching to gather up a collection of candles, which had spilled from the cupboard. Red, bronze, silver, pink, blue. How could it be? she wondered. He looked no different than he’d looked before when he’d been holding her, when he’d been kissing her, when he’d been acting as if he wanted her.

  She said, carryi
ng on the charade but still looking for the slightest chance, “So the facts are perfectly straight, then? I mean, Harvie looked so bloody clean, didn’t he? I know we had the Wiltshire connection from the first, but as to the rest…Hell, sir, I hate to throw a wrench, but have you checked every angle?”

  “Are we certain Payne’s our man?” Lynley clarified.

  “That’s the question,” Barbara said.

  “We’re within an inch of certainty. What’s left is the print.”

  “Which one is that?”

  “The one St. James found inside the recorder. We’re bringing it to Wiltshire—”

  “Now?”

  “Now. We need a confirmation from Amesford CID. They’ll have his prints on file there. When we make the match, we’ll have him.”

  “And then?”

  “Then we do nothing.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s got to lead us to the boy. If we take Payne before that, we run the risk of losing the child. When Luxford’s paper comes out in the morning without the story Payne wants to see in it, he’s going to head for the boy. That’s when we’ll grab him.” Lynley continued, his words low and urgent. He told her she was to carry on as before. He told her that Leo Luxford’s safety was paramount. He emphasised that they must wait and do nothing and let Payne lead them to where he had the boy hidden. He told her that once they had confirmation on the fingerprint, Amesford CID would put the house under surveillance. All she had to do until that time was to carry on as normal. “Winston and I are leaving for Wiltshire now,” he told her. “Can you maintain things where you are? Can you carry on? Can you go back to whatever you were doing before I phoned?”

  “I expect so,” she said, and she wondered how the hell she was going to manage it.

  “Fine,” Lynley said. “As far as he knows, we’re closing in on Alistair Harvie, then. You carry on exactly as before.”